financial giant in the game as evidenced by its multimillion dollar bid for a player like tevez. this week their bid was dropped. they have more than 100 years of proud history and i wish the team and the fans all the success in the world. thanks for being part of my program this week. ly see you next week. stay tuned for "reliable sources." -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com the message was simple, what happened was awful, but not my fault. rupert murdoch tells parliament he's not responsible for the phone hacking debacle that tarnished his media umpire. some of his staff staffers are punching back. an angry president obama said the debt talks collapsed on friday right after "the new york times" said the two sides were close to a deal. is the president being spun in this budget brinksmanship which

continues today. an online report about michele bachmann suffering from frequent migraines become as headache for her campaign. would that story be written about a man? >> yank uighar quits because he says the network told him to tone it down. he'll be here and he won't be toning it down. this is "reliable sources." he looked well, 80 years old as he sat in the witness chair and hall tingly answered the questions. rupert murdoch says he runs a big company and couldn't be expected to know the details of illegal conduct at one london tabloid or precisely how it was covered up. the chief executive of news corp. went out of his way to down play his influence. >> sometimes i would say to keep in touch.

i edit "the sunday times" nearly every saturday, not to influence what he has to say at all. >> perhaps the most penetrating question came from a member of parliament who wanted to know just where does the buck stop? >> do you accept responsibility for this whole fiasco? >> no. >> you're not responsible. who is responsible? >> the people that i trusted to run it and then maybe the people they trusted. >> the hearing was carried live by all three cable news networks, including murdoch's fox news and made headlines here and around the world. 80-year-old global power broker rupert murdoch called this the most humble day of his life. we watched him called to account in front of british parliament for the scandal that outraged the world. >> rupert murdoch called it the most humbling day of his life and he said he was sorry, but it wasn't his fault and he wasn't resigning. then someone hit him with a

cream pie. >> boy, did cable news enjoy replaying that moment with the clown who threw the pie. joining us to examine the impact of the scandal, from cambridge, england, john burns with london bureau chief of "the new york times." in boston, paul fary from "the washington post" and in new york, vicky ward, contributing editor for "vanity fair." john burns, murdoch didn't say anything that particularly damaged him in that testimony, but he looked something of a detached ceo, did he not? >> he certainly did. it's one thing to say he only called the "news of the world" editor from time to time and asked him what's doing. it's another thing to say that five years into this building scandal, he just remained hands off. at some point or other, this shrewd, astute, tough guy you would have thought would have wanted to look into this more seriously or to tell his son who

runs the british operations to look into it more seriously. the question arises, of course, did he just stay away because he didn't want his fingerprints on any of this? >> ha is a very good question. speaking of his son, paul farry, james murdoch who did much of the talking said he didn't know details of the evidence when he approved a $1.4 million settlement to one of the hacking victims who sued. two former executives came out and said no, no, no, that's not right. we told him. is this a building credibility crisis for the murdochs right now? >> yes, it certainly is. it's difficult to claim that you're paying out these large sums of money to people and then discover that there's a whole mess of these out there. that's what's going on with james murdoch. as a ceo of this division, it's his job to know and he's had several years, as john points out, to know. the fact that he didn't suggests he's either dumb or he's

incompetent. >> vicky ward, you know the murdoch family. what toll is this taking on rupert? >> i think it's taking an enormous toll. it would be very surprising if it wasn't, howie. i would like to address a few things that have come out. unless you actually have worked for the murdochs, you don't know. so to take john's point about how could he not know what was going on at the "news of the world," quite frankly, rupert murdoch 20 years ago, 30 years ago, those english papers were his babies, he'd broken the print unions to basically create that empire. then he did call those -- newspaper editors all the time. but news corp. has evolved. it's become a much larger, much more global company. those newspapers create a fraction of its wealth. now i think it's quite legitimate when he says he delegated and, yes, there were

problems with that, we now know, major problems. but he did delegate. i think that is a credibility statement. >> the question remains if rupert isn't responsible and james didn't know, who is responsibility? let me move on because i want to play tape for john burns about comments from fox's bill o'reilly who says of course anybody who broke the law at the "news of the world" should be punished, but he also had this to say involving your newspaper. >> but here in the united states there isn't any intrusion of the story thus far on news corp. properties, none. yet you have "the new york times" absolutely running wild with the story, front page, front page, front page, column, column, column, vicious stuff, vicious stuff. and it's all ideological, isn't is it not? >> running wild, vicious stuff, ideological? >> you're asking me, howard? nonsense, rubbish, not at all.

who could deny that a scandal in one of the world's largest if not the largest media organization with influence over tens of millions of people, a scandal of this kind is not news? secondly, as for vicious and the rest of it, i just ask your viewers to go to our website and read what we've actually written about this and i think you'll find it's forensic. it's very careful. if there's any stepping over that mark, you can be sure that our editors will push us back and remind us not to do it. as a matter of fact, i would say the opposite is true. i think because "the new york times" has to worry about competition from murdoch properties like the "wall street journal," we have been especially careful to be forensic and evenhanded about this. so bill o'reilly attacking us

like that is just nonsense. >> howie -- >> go ahead. >> john, with all due respect, in your own paper today there's a headline, cnn host, an ex-tabloid editor is reluctantly dragged into the phone scandal. talking about piers morgan. he wasn't reluctantly dragged into the phone scandal. he came out on his own volition on monday night and then certain assertions were made by louise mensch, a british member of parliament about what was written in his diaries. he then defended himself and said were categorically untrue and all you had to do for him to be validated was to read his book. even the british have come out and said she got it wrong. >> let's get a response from john burns. >> i think there's an edge of paranoia with what you're saying. you apparently don't want to talk about the substance of the article which gives full voice, very extensive voice and i know

this firsthand because i was involved in preparing an e-mail exchange. it could only be e-mail because that's what piers morgan insisted on last night. the questions that we put to him, he answered them and answered them fully. we ran a very long story, two pages on the website, giving his answers in full. as for the reluctantly dragged in, i'm sure everybody who has been associated with this in any way, whose name has been brought up in any way, would be reluctant to be drawn into it. i think piers morgan would be the first to say, and it certainly was strongly implicit in everything he said to us on the telephone and by e-mail last night that he was very reluctant as who would not be? >> i know empirically that's not true. >> let me not so reluctantly jump in. we invited piers morgan to join us and he declined. i want to play some tape of

louise mensch talking about this on cnn and morgan's very aggressive response. >> i said what i said in the committee, wolf. i'm afraid right now i'm going to say i can't comment about it outside of the committee room. >> i call on you to show some balls, repeat what you said about me and go buy a copy of my book "the insider." >> she made very specific claims. later on she repeated them even to me giving tutorials in phone hacking, how i hacked people myself. how my staff had broken stories of phone lacking. she has absolutely no evidence on any of this. she based it on what she claimed i published in my own volume of diaries. >> paul, let me let you be the arbiter. also he believes piers morgan knew about the hacking. morgan puts out that the guy has already gone to jail. how much of a problem is this for piers morgan? >> well, i don't think it's a problem because louise mensch is

wrong. it is not in his book. he does not mention hacking. the whole basis of her story is incorrect. the reporter who accused piers morgan of hacking is, himself, accused of insider trading and was involved in a scandal over there in london. >> he went to jail. >> went to jail for it, convicted. just one thing about bill o'reilly and fox. fox has explaining to do as well. they are invested in this story or not invested as the case may be. they have covered the story far less than cnn has or that msnbc has. it may well be as a result of their ownership and their competitive position that they have made that editorial judgment not to cover it. >> fox has covered it a little more than in the beginning and certainly did carry the hearings. the project for excellence in journalism did a study july 6 through july 15, in the evening only, you see cnn with 130

minutes, msnbc 125 minutes and fox news with 24 minutes. vicky ward, let me ask you, the "wall street journal" mocked the moral outrage being directed at one company. news corp. saying lots of tabloids in britain engaged in all sorts of outrageous behavior. you have rupert murdoch saying this is the most humble day of his life. which will we believe? that he and management are sorry or this is being made too much of by the rest of the press? >> it's a great question, howie. i've spoken about this before. you have here a real problem. i believe rupert is sincerely, sincerely appalled and sorry that in the case of mill lee dowler which is really what brought this scandal about when it was revealed that a teenage girl's phone was tampered with in order to sell newspapers because readers might think she was still alive. >> are the critics going overboard as the "wall street

journal" editorial suggests? i have only a few seconds here. >> the "wall street journal" had the right to say that i think because there are plenty of other stories in your own country, watergate, the pentagon papers, and in england the daily telegraph two years ago paid for stolen records to expose mp's stolen expenses. there is a certain complicitness in britain and here that sometimes illegal means are justified to meet the end, not when a girl has been murdered. where is the line? >> got to jump. john burns, quick final thought on whether the coverage has been a little bit overheated? >> no. i don't think so at all. i can only say again to your viewers who care about this, and i'm sure many do, please go to our website or go to copies of our print editions, today's and the last weeks and months and make your own judgment. i think you eelg see in the tradition of "the new york times" it's very, very balanced

and very careful and we have said and we have said more than once that mr. murdoch deserves great credit in many respects for what he's done for british newspapering. in fact n the 1980s by confronting if unions here he may have saved "the times" of london and other titles he now owns. we have tried at every turn to be evenhanded. >> john burns, paul farhi, vicky ward, thanks very much for joining us. when we come back, the man that blew the whistle on the hacking scandal, but why did he go along in the first place. [ male announcer ] succeeding in today's market requires decisive action. i go to e-trade and tap into the power of revolutionary mobile apps to trade wherever. whenever. life isn't fully experienced sitting idly by.

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london. you didn't engage in any phone hacking yourself, knew about it, went along with it. is it morally wrong for journalists to tap into the voice mail of some celebrity or royal family member? >> well, i've always said no. my argument is if you want to have a free democracy and an open society where politicians behave well, you have to have a press that is allowed to stray into the areas of the dark arts, i.e., not the illegal area, to catch people out. fundamentally you don't go to a politician and say, hello, i'm a "news of the world" reporter, are you having an affair with your secretary while presenting yourself as a happily married man. you've got to be more clever than that, you've got to catch them. i think that's the public interest defense, that sometimes it's in the best interest of the country to have -- after all, who polices the police and who polices our politicians if it isn't a free press? >> if journalists are going to

try to police politicians and the police andon'theysibity tol? >> they do, and this is -- arge. if you look at the day to day fodder of who was hacked, it's people like hugh grant and kylie minogue and nicole -- big american stars, also, but when they were in the uk. how do you justify that? i think the only justification for that is it allows the "news of the world" to be the biggest selling english language newspaper in the world. when i was there, oddly working for piers morgan who was my first boss, we sold more than five million copies a week with 12 million readers which is a substantial part of the adult population of the country. so every couple of months we did something worthy. we had a pakistan cricket

scandal, caught a politician with trousers around his ankles after getting voted in as a happy married man. every couple months five million people bought that and 12 million people read that. so the important stories have massive power that they wouldn't otherwise have had. >> obviously these techniques look very different when they're employed against ordinary people who are not celebrities, not famous athletes, not members of the royal family. you mentioned hugh grant. his phone was hacked by "news of the world." he is suinging. you had a chance encounter, and he actually taped your conversation. let me play a little of that for our viewers. >> do you think it's right the only person with a decent digital scanner these days is the government. 20 years ago we all had a gone. are you comfortable that the only people who can listen to them now are -- >> celebrities themself, you justify because they're reach?

>> yeah, i mean -- >> if you don't like it, just get off the stage. you don't believe celebrities have any right to privacy at all it sounds like? >> well, fundamentally. if you hire a publicist and ask him can he get me in the movies in any way possible, in the magazines in any way possible and can you get me in the newspapers in the most favorable, possible way, i think you certainly lose the public backing for when you start winging, somebody only got paid 5,000 pounds for the last movie. i think nine out of ten people who only take home 250 pounds a week in britain would happily have their messages hacked into to two two months' work and get paid 5,000 pounds. >> why did you decide to go public about the phone hacking at "news of the world"? >> first of all, sean hoare who

cracked under the pressure, he did drink too much and died last week, he started it, and it was presented -- i just bought a bar in the south of england about nine months ago which is where hugh grant taped me. i was semi retiring from journal into. and the guardian presented it as a fantastic story. it was the british watergate and i was offered the chance to be part of it oovps. the whole point was, if we can label our former bosses, rebekah brooks, andy coulson who are arrested, not criminal masterminds but engaged in a media empire where criminality was rif, if that media empire got david cameron elected as the british prime minister, that's a good story. >> i have a break coming up. since you mentioned rebekah brooks and andy coulson, both former editors of "news of the world," do you have any doubt that they knew phone hacking was

going on at that paperer? >> i have no doubt whatsoever. piers morgan was also my editor, but in that time in 1994-'5, it wasn't illegal. you could sit outside someone's house and tap into their phone conversations and record all of it. and also look at their messages. i need to ask a lawyer actually, is it legal for a wife to hack into her husband's phone if she thinks he's cheating? about 10% of the population of britain have done that, too sgle well ooh keep our focus on journalists. paul mcmull land, good luck with the pub. >> thanks. coming up on the second part of "reliable sources," debt talks collapse after news reports of a deal. how much of the press is continuing to spin? msnbc's yank uighar resigns with choice words for his former network. but do his charges hold up? on e,

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john boehner may have walked out of the debt talks on friday night. it was president obama who seesed the bully pulpit when he walked into a briefing room full of reporters and spoke about how the seemingly endless impasse is

being covered. >> for us to not be keeping those folks in mind every single day when we're up here, for us to be more worried about what some funder says or some talk radio show host says or what some columnist says or what pledge we signed back when we were trying to run or worrying about having a primary fight, for us to be thinking in those terms instead of thinking about those folks is inexcusable. >> but wait? hadn't "the new york times" reported just the day before that obama and boehner were close to a major deal. joining us to talk about how the deal is being covered, jonathan strong, reporter for the daily caller and ruth marcus, columnist for "the washington post." i know you love writing about the budget, ruth. it is getting hard pour the most dedicated journalists to follow the action with the plans and walkouts, now back at the white

house yesterday. >> not to mention the different baselines. >> this is where we do the math? >> yes. that is why some of the reporting has been so confused. any rational human being would be confused listening to these guys talk. from my point of view, it's almost a recipe for bad reporting. you have talks going on behind closed doors in an atmosphere of everything must be tweeted immediately. the guys who are involved can barely understand, are you in the current law baseline or the current policy baseline? i'll be happy to give you the lecture off camera about the differences, and enormously high stakes. the full faith and credit of the u.s. >> enormously high stakes. there seems to be an assumption, jonathan strong, typical congress, they'll screw around and screw around and at the last minute we'll have a deal. now some journalists are saying are these people crazy enough to keep fighting? >> i actually have concerns we

may not reach a deal in my own observations. the problem is, as you were getting at, these leaders go into a room and then all we get is this highly politicized readout of what happened. >> from each side. >> from each side. sometimes it actually directly contradicts each other on key facts. so you have to triangulate the truth and i talked to about a dozen insiders last night who say they don't find the reports reliable, but that's the only information they're getting. >> it's almost become like this horse race where they'll have a deal, not have a deal, completely fallen apart. as we saw the president there, obama as angry as i've ever seen them, ripping the republicans. he came back a couple times, talk radio hosts and columnists. >> i took that kind of personally, the columnists, those are the people you really need to listen to. >> do youity he's giving too much weight to the fact of how it's covered? >> i thought he was hot on friday, but i also thought he was effective. i think his fundamental point

is, look, there is real -- there's something really, really important going on here. we have to get a deal, don't be distracted by the noise from both sides. and also look, this was an interesting moment. the president of the united states said, look, i gave away this. i said i wanted to mess with your entitlements. i gave away this, i said i wanted to raise your taxes. why can't these people say yes? it was an odd way to sell yourself perhaps. >> to sell yourself by talking about how much you've given up in negotiations. >> and how much pain you're ready to inflict on everybody. >> i wonder, jonathan, whether you think the press has bought into obama's argument, that he's compromised again and again and it's the house republicans being intransient. >> the republicans i've taken to say they feel obama's megaphone

gives him the power to set the -- >> covered on cable news. >> they're afraid that he's been the one who has had the voice here, and i think that the biggest sin of omission by the news media is not -- democrats ought to have had to introduce a budget plan by this point, and they haven't really. obama gave a speech. the cbo said we can't score a speech. they have not really faced accountability. >> so do you think that journalists by and large -- obviously a lot of people in the media are covering this -- have been too harsh in saying these house republicans, influenced by the tea party, just won't budge and not done enough to hold the democratic side accountable? >> it's difficult because that's a subjective question, right? from what perspective in the you live in nancy pelosi's district, you're saying, just raise taxes. if you live in eric cantor's

district, you say how does that make sense? >> "the new york times" went hard with that story saying close to a deal. boehner tweeted "false." it turns out boehner was right. >> because as the president has reminded us, nothing is agreed on until everything is agreed on. i think, by the way, this has been one of the most fascinating uses i've seen of the bully pulpit, where the president has, at least until now, done a very effective job of putting the republicans on the defensive and using his power to really command attention. i do think in the end i'm continuing to be optimistic that if we don't have a grand bargain, we will at least avert armageddon which is the definition of success these days. >> it could be an ugly compromise that doesn't really resolve much i wonder how the press will report that. >> they reported democratic officials by white house officials the deal was eminent. that could have been true but a

deal was never reached. >> they may have been properly reporting what their sources said. when you put it on the front page, it carries a lot of weight. >> this story will continue, since we're nine days from a possible u.s. government default on debt. we'll move on. after the break, the media jumping on a reporter that michele bachmann suffers from frequent migraines. but is that a big deal? only one calcium supplement does that in one daily dose. new citracal slow release... continuously releases calcium plus d for the efficient absorption my body needs. citracal. ♪ let me make you smile ♪ let me do a few tricks ♪ some old and then some new tricks ♪ ♪ i'm very versatile ♪ so let me entertain you ♪ and we'll have a real good time ♪ [ male announcer ] with beats audio and flash, you can experience richer music

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bachmann has been drawing major scrutiny, much of it not favorable. the minnesota congresswoman has quoted the lord saying be sub miss sive wives, you are to be sub miss sive to your husbands. the daily caller website broke the story about her recurring problems with migraines and the story became a pain for her campaign. >> congresswoman and gop presidential candidate michele bachmann today denied a report that she suffers from, quote, debilitating migraine headaches. >> after michele bachmann, a website reporting she's taking medication for migraine headaches. predictly that set off a frenzy of media activity. >> former aides allege this rising force in the republican presidential field suffers from

my gains so debilitating, they can undermine her ability to lead. >> jonathan strong, that was your story in the daily caller. women get more migraines than men, nonetheless lead perfectly productive lives. any hesitation about making this the issue? >> i had the same information about mitt romney, tim pawlenty, i would have written the same story. john mccain had to release 1500 pages of documents. i think this is a gender neutral thing. >> other candidates have faced scrutiny about their health, but probably from medical conditions or past medical problems that are more serious than having migraines. >> i actually don't take issue with the, if it were a male candidate in the same circumstance would have written the same story. i assume that's true. i think it's a completely legitimate story. i also think it's a very

treacherous story. we're still working our way in 2011 through the minefield of gender politics. when you have a health issue that is more often than not experienced by women, when it sort of feeds into, and this was not jonathan's intention, but it does feed into the "not tonight, dear, i have a headache," the sense of women being weak, having vapors. you have to deal with it in a very, very sensitive way. i think there's attention between the need to be sensitive on the one hand there and the absolutely critical point that, especially when we're talking about people running for president of the united states, their health issues need to be on the table. migraines can be debilitating. we want to know -- i think the more information we have about candidates, the better off we are. but it is a tricky subject. >> the question is how debilitating. on that point, you granted anonymity to your sources.

these are former aides and advisors to michele bachmann. why would they tell you this? could they have an agenda? why wouldn't they go on the record? they were saying things that clearly had the effect of hurting her campaign? >> in an ideal world you want to use named sources. in this case peas people were terrified that michele bachmann in running for president either would, a, get -- allow obama to skate away with re-election if this came up or, b, if she did win president, be severely hurt by this condition. >> you're saying that they were sincerely moat vaeed, not that they had any personal animosity, but that if she were to be the nominee and this came out, it would help obama win re-election and can she serve as president. since they don't work for her anymore, why couldn't their names be used? >> actually, one of the three sources is an adviser to bachmann, present tense. >> i can understand that. how about the other two, why

grant anonymity? >> because this was the only way to get out a story in our estimation that we thought was important and we thought was true. other news media outlets have corroborated it. >> except the degree to which migraines are debilitating. does the sourcing here bother you at all? >> there's two things that bother me, we all simultaneously would prefer to have all our sources to go on the record and use their middle initials. we understand as journalists that's not always possible. i do think when you're using anonymous sources and when the impact on the campaign is clearly going to be, let's call it debilitating, parsing their motives is a hard thing. the sources say what they want is to save the country from a president who can't do the job. but is that really what's going on? or are they trying to torpedo her campaign? >> right. you wrote this week about bachmann talking about being sub

miss sive to -- wives being sub miss sive to husbands. is that a real journalistic issue? you wrestled with it in your column. >> was it legitimate for me to raise it? i think by definition it was legitimate to raise it. i wrote an entire column about it. >> you seem con flicked about it. >> i'm conflicted only in this sense. just to set the stage for your viewers, she said in a church speech when she was running for the house in 2006 that the reason she'd become a tax lawyer was that her husband had instructed her to be a tax lawyer even though she had no interest in tax. she said -- she wasn't making a joke, she was being completely sincere. the reason she listened to her husband was that the bible instructs wives to be sub miss sive to their husbands. >> is this a case of the media taking a biblical injunction too literally? >> i don't know. >> you think it's fair game? >> i think parsing her views on

family and how she chose her career is fair game, yeah, when she's running for president. >> you also write for female candidates more more than men appearance matters. any blowback on that? >> not a peep. everybody knows it. if you're a woman, it probably would have been easier for you to write that bachmann story. that was an easier sentence for me to write. >> good note to end on. ruth marcus, jonathan strong, thanks for stopping by this morning. up next, yank yuger is bounced after the network tells him to watch his tone. he'll talk about the bitter breakup in a moment. i go to e-trade and get unbiased analyst ratings and 24/7 help from award-winning customer support to take control of my finances and my life. i tap into the power of revolutionary mobile apps. to trade wherever. whenever. life isn't fully experienced sitting idly by. neither is investing. [ birds chirping ]

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[ male announcer ] want to pump up your gas mileage? come to meineke for our free fuel-efficiency check and you'll say...my money. my choice. my meineke. he's been part of msnbc's nightly lineup since the beginning of the year trying out for a permanent slot. cenk yug gur is a two-fisted liberal who isn't afraid to throw some punches. >> when they tell you it's broke, they are lying, lying, lying. the problem is they've already spent that surplus on tax cuts for the rich. those are the guys that are sucking off of you. so here is something else they should suck on our rage. >> the right answer was to fight. the right answer was to kick the republican ass. >> uygur says his network bosses

talked to him about his delivery and when he refused to change his style, they parted company, but not before taking a few shots at msnbc. >> i got pulled in and they told me, hey listen -- it was one specific person, the head of msnbc. he said i was just in washington and people in washington tell me that they're concerned about your tone. >> and cenk uygur joins me. you refer to phil griffin, the president of msnbc. what did you think he meant when he asked you to tone it down? >> well, we were having the conversation and he said i talked to people in washington and they were concerned about your tone. in the beginning of the conversation i was thinking, that's kind of a weird way to put something, what does he mean? his friend bob in washington? does he mean one of the reporters? what does he mean. >> apparently he meant other msnbc staffers. >> that's what he claims. but i find that -- i'm incredulous about that. the rest of the conversation was

hey, look, cenk, we'd love to be outsiders, outsiders are cool. but we're insiders, we're the establishment and you have to look like it. if my bookers had problems with my waving my arms, that would be an incredibly weird way of putting that. >> you suggested when this perh some white house pressure on msnbc because you have taken on the president on various things. but you don't have any evidence of that, do you? >> but i didn't say that. i said people in washington had a concern with my tone, which is what phil griffin told me. i didn't say that he said that it was the white house. now, you know, who is the people in washington? i think that's a really great question, probably needs some more investigation. you know, a friend of mine just suggested that i watch the "60 minutes" piece by al sharpton around i find that to be curious because lesley staal says sharpton says he's decided not to criticize the president about anything. so the guy who was criticizing

the p is out, even though he had really good ratings, and the guy who has decided not to criticize the president about anything is in. >> msnbc in talks with al sharpton to take over that 6:00 p.m. show, and that probably will happen. the msnbc statement. there was an offer on the table for you to remain a contributor and do a weekend show. you chose not to do that. what about this notion that, you know, you just decided to go negative and rip them? >> all right. well, look, here's the thing. they say it's baseless, except they don't specify what's baseless about it. they have acknowledged that conversation took place. they just say that insider/outsider conversation, we meant your producer said that, which, again, does not seem credible at all, right? so they've actually acknowledged every single part of the story,

so i don't know what they're saying is is baseless. second of all, yes, there was a lot of money on the table. i'm not a rich guy. i have a pontiac grand am from ten years ago, the air conditioning doesn't work. in the end, i told my agent, that's it, we're done, and the deciding factor is i have to tell the story. our media is obsessed with access. it's not just msnbc and it's not personal. i think cnn does it. fox news is is a propaganda outfit entirely. we're all worried, oh, my god, are the politicians going to come on? our job is supposed to be to challenge the politicians and the government. that's what the press is supposed to do, and i don't think we're doing it. >> for my part, i see people i disagree with and agree with on fox, cnn, msnbc, it comes back to your tone. you can be pretty strident at times. don't your employers, if you're going to work for an msnbc, have every right to say your style needs some adjustment? why does that tick you off so much? >> no, no, no.

look, if it's just matter of style, i hear you. like, for example, they say, you know, you should act like a senator on tv. i don't agree with that, but, hey, i work for them so i tried to listen to that as much as i could. right? if i thought it was about style and, hey, don't wave your hands or this or that, you think i'm going to turn down all of that money that i really needed because i didn't agree with their stylistic -- >> but -- >> i'm accused about being an insider. that's not about style. that's about substance. >> did anybody say you should moderate your political positions? >> well, that was the -- certainly the sense that i got from it. you know, they were concerned that we're too aggressive against democrats. i was certainly the most aggressive against president obama, no question about that. you can see that in all the tapes. i think president obama is not remotely progressive, and that's the message that, you know, i'm pretty sure that the white house does not like to hear as they're heading into an election. and, look, howard, if i thought it was about style, i'm not

turning down the money. it was absubstanout substance. they say be the establishment. i can't be the establishment. i have to tell people the truth, which is the democrats and republicans are here to screw you. they're about to cut social security and cut taxes on the rich. it's insanity. and who on the air is saying it? >> i have half a minute. >> i don't see it. >> i have half a minute. after you were asked to tone it down, you kicked it up and went back to your more expressive style. you were kind of giving msnbc a finger in the eye. >> look, when they tell me, hey, you've got to be an insider and watch your tone, i think i'm not going to do that. and if you want to hire me, great. if you don't want to hire me, this is what happens. i have no problem with that. you make your choice. i don't want to work for an organization that says, hey, take it easy on washington. >> you have made that clear. >> that's the opposite of what we do. >> thanks very much. maybe we'll have you back since you're now liberated. >> still to come on this

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the u.s. women's soccer team made it to the world cup finals against japan, and it was a pretty exciting moment.

i know women, not big soccer fans, who were transfixed. yes, the american team lost in a shoot-out but the women were celebrated by most of the media. not on hbo's "real sports" where bryant gumbel gave them a good, swift kick. >> can we please stop commenting on women in sports? are we so fearful of being labeled sexist we ant objectively assess the efforts of women athletes? >> they made sloppy mistakes. >> had a men's team turned in a similar performance, papers and pundits nationwide would have had a field day, assailing the players, criticizing the coach, and demanding widespread changes to a men's national team that flat-out choked. yet the common reactions to this ladies' loss were expressions of empathy for the defeat of the unfortunate darlings and pride this in their heroic effort. >> that's outrageous. bryant gumbel is -- he has a point, doesn't he? they did blow the game. but sports isn't just about scoring points and playin